Please note: I am a professional video producer and I do not appreciate major brands, networks and professionals using my design WITHOUT crediting me as a source. You see, I created this design because there was a lack of available options. I spent many days getting it just right and as a result I decided that something so common should be widely available. I decided to share, asking for credit when used. I would also appreciate a comment with a link to your work. It's not required, but I would like to see the creative ways it has been used around the web.

Also note, I am not interested in helping you format this for a powerpoint or changing any feature--unless of course you are looking to hire me. I'm sorry but that's just reality.

Here are the links to download. And here is the link from 2010 with lots of creative examples where it's been used. Thank you all for sharing and making the internet a creative and inspiring place to work!

This is a very personal story that gets to some of my roots. If you're interested in reading more of this story, I would turn to the internet. There's enough clues... I don't think we hear about the side of prison life from children going to prisons. I've watched in shock as the media and hollywood fell into the pit of prison life infatuation, romanticization or whatever you want to call it. I realize that people are trying to shed light on concerns that incarcerated people are treated unfairly and something should be done about it. Don't get me wrong, I applaud the intention. But I grew up seeing the world quite the opposite. I grew up going to prisons every weekend to visit someone. Life seemed better for them on the inside. It was bad for us when they were gone. My grandma would cry daily and work herself to the bone to send them money for "necessities." I was never allowed to join the school band even though I was obsessed with music. Instruments were too expensive. Holidays were sad and uncelebrated.

It was even worse when they returned. They would come home to large neighborhood parties with more stuff than I ever had -- tv's, fans, posters, music collections...and after only a short time they would have sold their stuff off for drugs or cash and turned to taking what little I had. My walkmans were turned into tattoo guns. My nintendos pawned for drugs.

They came back looking healthy, well rested and more muscled and bulkier than ever. Their release days were the darkness of my childhood.

This is just one of those "release days" that I wanted to tell. It was a way to get it off my chest, but as a result I really learned a lot about my mom during the making of this animation. I realize that I would have fallen right into this trap. He was like her Stevie Nicks -- shining up there on stage. A dream come to life, for her. And I realize that her life has just been absolute shit. None of it was my fault, but I'm sorry. I will always love her and always feel that it is my job to protect her. This is where that feeling started.

----------------------------------- Technical stuff: I wanted to make an animation project using my ipad and photoshop for a change, so I did. It started as an audio podcast, but I felt that it needed some visuals. It was meant to be quick and fast, but turned into months of work. Limited free time, moved to San Francisco and kind of a long piece to animate.

I love finding holes in the internet that I can fill. I searched for an Illustrator template after discovering that is precisely what keeps causing me such huge delays in the design process when moving to After Effects. In my efficient obsessions, I keep trying to skip that step and then my projects immediately become:

a tangled web of graphic files that are hard to visualize at one time

impossible to create a more cohesive style

hard to reuse elements

Sure I create color schemes and burn through post-its like a monster, but I want to be able to see them all together. I know others do this and quite well I should add, but I've really been researching the workflow of others as well as my own and realized today that I just keep skipping it...

So this is my new workflow plan:

Workflows-storyboard

Anyway, I decided to make a 1080p video size animation Storyboard Template for Illustrator to force myself into this habit from now on. Thought I'd share. Maybe someone will find it instead of spending their Saturday night formatting a grid with script notes!

If anyone finds this helpful, I'll be back with an update on using a variation on this workflow to work with Keynote animation projects...soon.

By the way, I put the scripts on one layer and backgrounds and swatches also on their own layers in the template setup so that the export to After Effects or split to their own files will make it all a little cleaner. That is THE goal in this life, right.

Use the Illustrator export "Save as" feature to split the artboards into individual scene files to make animation within After Effects possible (because the damn dynamic link is still 10 years away from dynamic).

:: work in progress :: A first puppet…brought to life with a little 90's inspiration (song remix by yours truly). I'm still working out some of the kinks before I can launch the full puppet project, but I'm addicted. All of the images are hand-drawn from photos. Can't stop, won't stop now!
Being a "day person" has taught me that I'm a terrible housewife, but I'm a pretty good HouseDyke…typically capable of fixing just about anything. "Just about"..."Most of the time."